The Brothel in Rosenstrasse - Michael Moorcock

 In 1897 Ricky and Alexandra are staying at a luxury hotel in Mirenburg.   Alexandra is sixteen, Ricky twice her age.   Ricky is one of several Counts von Bek, not the important one, but a wealthy adventurer.   He and Alexandra have exhausted the permutations of sex and Alexandra in particular is keen to try something new.   So Ricky takes her to Frau Schmetterling's internationally renowned brothel in Rosenstrasse where he himself was educated in sexual matters.   They indulge.

Meantime the prospect of war hangs over this enclave of Mittel Europe.   Wedged between three mighty imperial powers, Russia, Germany and Austria, Waldenstein has remained proudly independent but disgraced politician Holzhammer has done a deal with the Austrians.   Soon Mirenburg is under siege.   The hotel is hit by a cannonball.   Ricky and Alexander become residents of the brothel in Rosenstrasse.   For a time they are safe - Frau Schmetterling's girls have after all served the senior officers on all sides - but Ricky fears he is losing Alexandra to a houseful of lesbians (all of whom he has had sex with in the past, or hopes to soon).   He starts to plan his escape.

This is very different from the usual Moorcock.   Ricky is a von Eck but he is not a Champion, far from it.   There is a stream punk element here - balloonists, etc - but nothing far-fetched or in any way fantastical.   The fantasy here is Mireburg which, despite the minute detail served up, including extracts from books of the period, is wholly 100% imaginary.   The other fantasy element is, obviously, sexual fantasy, in particular lesbianism and, in Ricky's case, paedophilia.   Alexandra is by no means his youngest; he goes into fond reminiscence about a younger girl whose virginity he bought from her disabled father in Naples.

Indeed, the book is Ricky's memoir, written on the eve of World War II, somewhere warm.  The text is peppered with interruptions from his manservant-nurse Papadakis, who also has his secrets, it seems, though they are only hinted at.

Written in 1992 this is Moorcock's take on the decadent fin de siecle literature of the 19th century.   Some of the material here is pretty hardcore but the brilliance of Moorcock's writing just about accommodates it.

Les Diaboliques - Barbey D'Aurevilly

 

Latest stop on my tour of decadent French fin de siecle literature is Barbey D'Aurevilly's collection of scandalous short stories from 1874 - so scandalous that it was confiscated by the Ministry of Justice.  You might think, so what?  Victorian sensibilities, even across the Channel, were very different to ours.  But no, the fate of the promiscuous woman in 'At a Dinner of Atheists' is horrific bordering on pornographic in any era.  Likewise the nature of the 'Woman's Revenge' in the final story.

It's called The She-Devils in most English translations but I think that leads to misconceptions of misogyny.  Each of the six stories features a strong, transgressive woman but I don't think for a moment that Barbey D'Aurevilly looks on them with contempt or disgust.  On the contrary, I believe he is fascinated by them - aroused, certainly, but also intrigued.  The stories are long - forty to fifty pages - and he gives himself plenty of time to probe their psychology and motivation - in itself a counter to any she-devilishness, because of course devils do devilish things for the sheer hell of it.

The authorial style, especially the at-one-remove (recit parle) storytelling, is not to everyone's taste but it is of its time - the parallels with Huysmans are obvious - and I was held spellbound.  Very dark material, not for beginners, but I want more.

Down There - J K Huysmans

 

The ultimate fin de siecle degenerate novel, so they say.  In fact La Bas is an academic discussion about the state of French literature at the end of the Nineteenth Century.  It was decadent, certainly, but that does not make a book about it decadent.  Durtal, our unheroic hero, is a middleaged novelist who has followed the naturalism of Zola about as far as it will go and found it lacking substance.  What he misses is the human soul.  So he sets out to bring naturalism and psyche together in a historical study of Gilles de Rais, the notorious 'Bluebeard' of medieval France.

Gilles de Rais interests Durtal because he started out as a pious soldier, the most important ally of Joan of Arc.  But after Joan's execution and the end of the war with England he becomes dissolute, debauched and appallingly depraved.  After he has defiled, butchered and discarded countless young children he is finally brought to book.  At his trial he confesses everything but recovers his Christian faith to such an extent that the parents of his victims escort him to his death, praying for his salvation.

Durtal wants to wallow in faith of the medieval kind.  He befriends the bellringer of St Surplice and through him an eccentric astrologer who claims he is being murdered remotely by a priest who has gone rogue and now celebrates the Black Mass.  It is the Black Mass which Durtal ultimately witnesses that gives the book its reputation.  Actually, this is nothing at all alarming, more childish than satanic.  What really did raise my eyebrows was what startled me a couple of years ago when I read Zola.  It's the sex.  Durtal finds himself being seduced by the wife of another dining companion and sleeps with her only because she can get him admitted to the Black Mass.

The end of the novel is something of an anticlimax.  The rest of it is absolutely fascinating.